Director, New Growth Innovation

This position is part of SCJ's New Growth Innovation Team, a small enterprise-focused venture capability created to identify, build and de-risk Horizon 4 growth opportunities beyond category-led Core and Adjacent innovation. The team pursues material white spaces where the consumer need, business model, technology, channel or ownership model may be fundamentally different from today's business.

The Director, New Growth Innovation serves as a Venture Lead / Opportunity GM, taking one to two transformational opportunities from thesis through validation, MVP, pilot and transition to scale. Although housed in the Marketing job family, this is not a traditional brand-management role: the Director leads integrated cross-functional venture pods and is accountable for the total opportunity - consumer, product/service, technical pathway, economics, partnerships and route to scale. The role operates under a gated funding model, using evidence to earn the next tranche of investment and making fast, reversible decisions within approved guardrails. Success requires an outside-in, entrepreneurial leader with deep curiosity, strong external networks and a bias to access the best capabilities wherever they reside.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Build and Lead Horizon 4 Growth Ventures

·     Identify and shape the largest white-space growth opportunities by starting with unresolved consumer needs and future disruption, not existing category boundaries.

·     Build clear venture theses around new businesses, customers, categories, business models, science/technology platforms and strategic capabilities that could create growth or defend SCJ from future disruption.

·     Lead one to two ventures as Opportunity GM from framing through pilot; define the must-be-true assumptions, learning agenda, investment needs and explicit kill/pivot criteria.

·     Translate ambiguity into testable hypotheses and run rapid consumer, business-model, pricing and channel experiments that maximize learning before scale investment.

·     Build compelling, evidence-based investment cases integrating consumer desirability, technical feasibility, economics, strategic right-to-win and potential for material scale.

Lead Open Innovation, Venture Execution and Scale

·     Lead cross-functional venture pods spanning RD&E, Insights, Design, Finance, Regulatory, Legal/IP, Strategic Sourcing, Supply Chain, Corporate Development and commercial partners; integrate perspectives without creating sequential functional approval layers.

·     Build and activate an external innovation ecosystem of strategic suppliers, startups, universities, co-manufacturers, technology providers, investors and channel/platform partners; routinely scan for capabilities SCJ should access rather than build internally.

·     Evaluate and recommend Make / Partner / Invest / Buy pathways; structure paid development, pilots, joint development and strategic partnership models that preserve optionality while evidence builds.

·     Operate with disciplined capital stewardship under a gated funding system; use stage funding to resolve the highest-risk assumptions first and recommend advance, pivot or stop decisions based on evidence.

·     Define and track venture metrics including speed to evidence, willingness to pay, unit economics, repeat/reorder, partner performance, proof of scale and capital efficiency.

·     Engage Category teams as strategic context and eventual scale partners without pulling early-stage work into Category approval processes; define transfer criteria, resources and scale requirements before pilot.

·     Prepare scale-ready ventures for transition by preserving the consumer insight, business logic, partner rights, economics and operating model; remain involved through transition to accelerate learning transfer and protect strategic intent.

Required Skills / Experience / Competencies:

• Bachelor's degree and 10+ years of relevant experience in marketing, innovation, new business development, strategy, venture building, general management or related roles

Preferred Skills / Experience / Competencies:

• Advanced degree; MBA preferred.
• Track record leading ambiguous, high-uncertainty growth from insight to market through rapid test-and-learn.
• Entrepreneurial operator who acts with pace, makes clear trade-offs, takes calculated risks, owns outcomes and stops weak ideas early.
• Strong outside-in orientation and external network across startups, emerging technologies, suppliers and new business models; converts external signals into opportunity theses.
• Exceptional cross-functional leadership without relying on hierarchy; integrates consumer, technical, commercial, financial and regulatory perspectives into decisions.
• Strong business-building and financial acumen: value-pool sizing, willingness-to-pay, unit economics, scenarios, business models and investment cases.
• Experience with open innovation and partnerships; supplier innovation, co-development, licensing, venture investing or M&A exposure is a plus.
• Ability to challenge category definitions and envision how technology, platforms or new ownership models could solve needs differently and disrupt existing businesses.
• Excellent executive communication, curiosity, agility and resilience. Prior CPG, digital/eCommerce, B2B, startup or venture experience preferred.

Job Requirements:

• Full-time position
• Remote work is available once a week for eligible employees
• This role is eligible for domestic relocation